Laundry and Children

There is Nothing to Eat

It is not unusual for me to go a week between grocery trips.  However, that is usually when I am not thinking about going to the grocery store.  This week is different.  This week I have made a conscientious decision not to go to the grocery store until at least Saturday.  The last time I went was exactly one week ago and it was mostly to shop for my hubby's birthday party.  So, in my mind, going another week without buying "family food" was akin to Mission Impossible.

I would like to say that I am totally motivated by altruistic reasons.  I would like to say that it is because I recently learned that everyday American family throws away 122 pounds of food a month.  I want to wrap myself up in a blanket of self-righteous do-goodery, but that wouldn't be exactly true.

Nope.  The truth is that we need to make a little extra wiggle room in our budget.  I went a bit overboard with Baconpalooza (aka my husband's birthday party) and I am now forced to make it up in other areas.  I am not "too big to fail," so I have to bail out my own leaking boat.  I know, I am so old school.  Bail myself out!  Do people even do that anymore?  But I digress.

So this week, we are eating only what is in our house already.  At first I was concerned as to how I would feed a family of 6 without the opportunity to run out to the grocery store at a moment's notice.  Surely we would starve, and I was eyeing which one of the children that we would consume first in our own personal Donner Pass.  However, as we close in on the end of the week, I am happy to report that none of the children have been consumed, not even the dog.  In fact, we've eaten pretty well.

The meals are starting to get a little more creative (Teddy had dry Rice Crispy cereal this morning and Rachel had two graham crackers), but we are using things that might normally just get thrown away.  When I look in my pantry and fridge, I see how much food we really have and it is quite a bit.

Still, we have run out of milk and eggs, which has not gone without complaint.  And I firmly believe that a lack of peanut butter and jelly could cause a mutiny.  Nonetheless, we trudge onward towards Saturday.  So even though this started out as purely a budgetary exercise, it has opened my eyes to how much food is actually in the house when I find myself saying, "There is nothing to eat in this house."

"And I tell you what, now that I'm grown and have kids of my own, I understand why my mother didn't want to take three youngins in the grocery store.  I would rather take a beating with a brick stick than take kids in the grocery store.  Cause as soon as those doors slide open, those kids start begging like homeless people at Christmas time." - Jeff Foxworthy

One Week Down, Three To Go

We completed our first Week of Nothing by going to the grocery store.  We were out of some staples.  So I bought the basics of eggs, milk, flour, sugar, brown sugar, and Cheerios (these are basically a major food group when you have a baby).  Since the flour was on sale, I bought two.  I make my own bread and I can go through flour pretty quickly.

I also bought some fruit (don't want the kids to get scurvy): a bag of apples (on sale), grapes (on sale) and bananas.  I also bought 6 cans of spaghetti sauce (on sale for 3/$3) and pasta  (on sale) so that I could inexpensively stretch out our food supply.  But then I fell off the wagon just a little bit and bought something that is not an absolute necessity.

My kids love Cinnamon Toast Crunch.  They would eat it three meals a day if I let them.  However, since it is almost $5 a box, we don't buy the name brand stuff.  Instead we buy the store brand Cinni-Mini Crunch.  It is really delicious and it was on sale.  Buy one get one free.  So in reality, I only bought two boxes and got the other two for free.  In total, I spent $5 on 4 boxes of cereal, but I feel really guilty.

However, my falling off the wagon may prove to have some benefit.  My kids have never shown such appreciation for a box of cereal.  Plus, it was real appreciation, not that fake showy kind that kids do when they get something that they expected to get all along.  Plus, they know that this kind of unexpected bounty may not come again; so they are enjoying every bite to its fullest.  I just heard Nicholas tell Rachel, "Don't use the big bowls for the cereal."  I see this as a step in the right direction.

All told, I spent $60 at the grocery store, but I think that with these items I can stay out of the grocery store for another two weeks.  We have found that we have many hidden treasures in our house in the form of foods that we didn't even know we had because we weren't ever forced to look.

Also, while I am coming clean, we also went to our church festival this weekend.  This is our church's major fundraiser, so any money spent was a donation to the church.  Rachel pointed out that one of the reasons that we are doing our Month of Nothing is to help us have empathy for those who do with less, so by giving more to the church we would be helping those very same people.  Sure it was logic that helped her get what she wanted, but it was a sound argument, so we went.   However, instead of just going with an unlimited budget, we said that we would stick to a set amount of money.  The kids knew that when the money ran out, it was gone.  They didn't argue or pout (much).  I think some lessons are starting to sink in a little.

Shopping Tip #4 – Coupons Are Free Money (if you use them correctly)

On Sunday morning I am like Edward Scissorhands.  Coupons are a flyin’.  I actually can feel my heart skip a beat when I find really good coupon.  If you ask my daughter, she will tell you, “Coupons are free money.”  There is however a bit of an art to coupon clipping.

The first thing is to only clip coupons for things that you will actually use.  If you want to try a new product, a coupon is a good way to make it affordable, which is exactly what the companies are hoping you think.  Doing this is fine, but in the end it will add to your bill not subtract, because you are buying things beyond your normal purchases.

Next, this is one that took me a little while to realize, using a coupon on a more expensive item when there is a cheaper version available does not save you money.  On my last shopping trip I had a 25-cent coupon for a five-pound bag of sugar.  Sugar was already on my list so the coupon was a good deal (see rule 1).  The bag of sugar would normally have cost 2.50 and the coupon brought it down to 2.25.  However, the store brand cost only 1.89.  The coupon did not bring down the cost of the item to lower priced option, therefore it was better to not use the coupon and instead buy the store brand sugar.

This type of thing happens a lot with personal hygiene products.  I am a Suave girl.  It’s reasonably priced and a quality product (a good price with a lousy product isn’t worth the money you save).  For a while I kept coming home with more expensive soaps and lotions and my grocery bill showed the strain.  I thought that just because I had a coupon I was getting a better deal.  Don’t be afraid to give up a coupon if you are actually going to pay less without the use of a coupon.

Now I am not saying that you should use the cheaper item just because it is cheaper.  However, like discussed in Shopping Tip #3, so many items in the grocery store have negligible differences.  So why pay more for advertising?

The next thing to do with coupons is to try to stack them with store specials.  Last week I was able to get cereal and sausage so cheap because I found a store that had them on sale and then I saved even more by using a coupon on top of the special.  Coupons are typically good for several months.  So, unless you need something right away, save them until the item goes on sale.

Finally, if you want to get the best coupons, you have to get a Sunday subscription to a larger newspaper.  I found a great deal in which I could subscribe to a year of the Sunday Washington Post for only 50-cents a week.  That is a dollar off the newsstand price.  All I have to do is find one good coupon and the paper has paid for itself.

I almost forgot.  It is important to keep your coupons well organized so that you can find them easily.  Here is a picture of my coupon organizer.  It is really almost embarrassingly big.  I got it at Michael’s and I used a 40% off coupon so it was only about $6.  Would you expect me not to use a coupon on my coupon organizer?

 

NEXT: Shopping Tip #5- Comparison Shop Online

Shopping Tip #3- Store Brands, Not Just White Labels with Black Letters Anymore

When I was growing up, I remember seeing generic canned food.  There would be a can with a plain white label with big black letters that said, “BEANS.”  There was not other information that I can remember.  Quite frankly, generics were a little scary, but not so any more.

The way I look at store brand or a second tiered product is, “They don’t advertise so they can save you money.”  My kids can tell the difference between a bowl of Malt O’ Meal Honey Nut Scooter and a box of Honey Nut Cheerios, but they like them both equally.  But when it comes to things like chicken broth or flour, the only place I can tell the difference is at the cash register.

Plus, our main two grocery stores, Giants and Wegmans (yes I know that I said horrible things about Wegman’s in the past and it is still not my favorite, but you can check prices on-line which is a tip for later) have store brand lines of organic foods.  This does not make the organic version the cheapest version, but, because it is a store brand, it makes it much more affordable.

For example, at Giant the Nature’s Promise (the store brand) organic butter is $4.50.  The Horizon (name brand organic) butter is $6 and the Organic Valley butter is $6.80.  Regular non-organic butter is $3.50 for the store brand and $4.69 for Land O’ Lakes.  So, by going for the store brand I can afford the organic version.  Sure it is a dollar more than the non-organic store brand, but it is 19 cents cheaper than the non-organic name brand.

Even with non-organic items, check the ingredients against those in the name brand.  Especially with non-food items, you will find that they are almost exactly the same and at a fraction of the cost.  All that advertising to convince you that a brand is better doesn't make it better, it just makes it more expensive.

NEXT Shopping Tip #4 – Coupons Are Free Money

Shopping Tip #2- Grocery Store Specials- Because There Are Very Few $5 Coupons

Wednesdays and Sundays are like mini-Christmases to me, but without all the stress and decorating.  Those are the days that my store circulars come out and they are the basis for my list making.

You can clip coupons until your fingers bleed, but you are rarely going to find a “Buy One, Get One Free” coupon.  However, stores have these deals all the time.  So if you have a $5 item, you’ll be getting it for $2.50.   I like to look at things in terms of per item and percent off.  Even though I have to buy two, I am getting each for 50% off.  Percentages are a good way of looking at things, because they put it in perspective.  “Buy One, Get One Half Off” sounds like a better deal than “25% off,” but that is exactly what you are getting.

Eating according to what is on sale takes a little getting used to.  We can’t just say, “Hey we feel like X tonight,” if X wasn’t on sale this week.  By the same token, it forces you out of your rut of making the same things over and over because you have to find a way to cook what is available.  It is like when we started to buy most of our fruits and veggies from the farmer’s market.  You learn to eat what is available.  This reason is also why I make up my menu at the same time that I make up my grocery list.

One final note on store sales, when you find a really good deal, especially when you can add a coupon on to a store deal (like I did with the cereal last week), and it is something that stores well (dried goods, paper products, personal hygiene items, frozen meat), stock up on it.  It is tempting to think how much lower you grocery bill could be this week if you only bought one or two of an item, but 8 will last you longer because when you run out you just have to go to your own pantry instead of back to the store where you will be paying full price.  So stocking up not only save you money per item, but it keeps that item off future shopping lists thus making them cheaper.

 

NEXT Shopping Tip #3- Store Brands, Not Just White Labels with Black Letters Anymore